FTC Charges DirecTV with Fraud for Misleading Customers

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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The Federal Trade Commission is finally catching on to what many uninformed DirecTV customers found out the hard way. The FTC voted to begin procedures to charge DirecTV with unfair advertising practices in its two-year package for failure to disclose all of the conditions and costs of the package in the advertisement.
 
In related news McDonald's is getting the government to force Domino's to lead their commercials with their calorie counts and fat content.
 
WHen I had Direct TV I liked it. Now that I have Uverse it made me appreciate DIrect TV much more. Uverse is junk, the equipment is junk, image quality is junk and I just rewired my whole house with quad shielded RG6 with no splitters. My 49.99 antenna gets better image quality hands down!!!
 
mullet said:
WHen I had Direct TV I liked it. Now that I have Uverse it made me appreciate DIrect TV much more. Uverse is junk, the equipment is junk, image quality is junk and I just rewired my whole house with quad shielded RG6 with no splitters. My 49.99 antenna gets better image quality hands down!!!
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I noticed the same thing when my friend had Direct and I had Charter. We have the same TV and going to his house in the middle of watching a football game the difference was stunning. U-Verse and normal cable are limited because they also do internet over the same cable. Make less room for high quality picture.
 
Hmm I'm usually not a fan of blaming a company for the customer's ignorance. Don't you have to sign the 2 year contract? Who doesn't realize they are signing a contract? Don't you have to read it?
 
john doe 182 said:
I noticed the same thing when my friend had Direct and I had Charter. We have the same TV and going to his house in the middle of watching a football game the difference was stunning. U-Verse and normal cable are limited because they also do internet over the same cable. Make less room for high quality picture.
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That problem with being limited is not as big of an issue for cable but is big issue with u-verse. Most area's the phone lines only can handle around 24-25mbit which is shared. Coax has a much larger pipe then that. only time i notice anything is when there is real fast action. I have delt with directv, their support even though they claim to have the best. Their support for fixing software bugs in their receiver software is a complete joke. They don't fix any of them even ones that cause receiver to randomly change channel on its own that they known about since like least 2008.
 
atreidesgoldenpath said:
Hmm I'm usually not a fan of blaming a company for the customer's ignorance. Don't you have to sign the 2 year contract? Who doesn't realize they are signing a contract? Don't you have to read it?
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Guess this is for people who don't read the fine print or even the disclaimers on the ads.

It was obvious when I looked at their ads, that the discounted rate was for only one year, and that you had to sign a 2 year contract. Not much difference than cable with a 3 month discounted rate on a 1 year contract. Only hard part was figuring out what the new rate would be after the discount period was over.
 
I've always seen the disclaimers well advertised. I never had a problem with them refunding the premium channels if I forgot to cancel before the billing period. I think it even tells you on the site dashboard.

The issue I have with DTV is the way they treat current customers. They bend over backwards with new customers to acquire them. But once your two year contract is up, they don't like to negotiate a new rate or offer you discounts. Retention is not their strong suit. You have to cancel, and in a couple weeks they'll send you the "we're sorry, here's a discount if you come back" mailer. See, the second year is designed to offset the first years install/acquisition (deep package discount) costs. So continuing on a third year should be somewhere in the middle.
 
atreidesgoldenpath said:
Dish and DTV both suck at retention. I think it is a common goal not to drive prices down lower.
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Dish is way worst.. I was a customer with them for 6 years and couldn't get a discount or free DVR upgrade. When I cancelled their service suddenly I with eligible for all the discounts, but they had no Sunday NFL package. Guess who won.
 
I have directv and have since 2010. They attract you with great pricing at the front end. I am paying more today for less channels than when I signed up.

:(
 
My advice to those with DirectTV, drop them hard like a newborn horse out of a standing horses anus.
 
Just drop cable completely folks, there is such vast amount of content available I can't imagine why you wouldn't these days.
 
atreidesgoldenpath said:
Hmm I'm usually not a fan of blaming a company for the customer's ignorance. Don't you have to sign the 2 year contract? Who doesn't realize they are signing a contract? Don't you have to read it?
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nutzo said:
Guess this is for people who don't read the fine print or even the disclaimers on the ads.

It was obvious when I looked at their ads, that the discounted rate was for only one year, and that you had to sign a 2 year contract. Not much difference than cable with a 3 month discounted rate on a 1 year contract. Only hard part was figuring out what the new rate would be after the discount period was over.
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IIRC DirectTV is accused of actually obscuring details of the contract from some customers.

In any case, there's no reason for these contracts to be complicated. If government action is the only realistic means consumers have to push back then so be it.
 
john doe 182 said:
I noticed the same thing when my friend had Direct and I had Charter. We have the same TV and going to his house in the middle of watching a football game the difference was stunning. U-Verse and normal cable are limited because they also do internet over the same cable. Make less room for high quality picture.
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It's their choices in compression. DirectTV and Uverse both use MPEG-4 for HD DirectTV tends to dedicate more bandwidth and may use a more advanced profile. Cable companies still like to slide by with MPEG-2 and even more bandwidth. In other words Uverse just chooses to use less bandwidth for their video and it shows, it's probably so they can sell it to more homes even homes that may not entirely have the bandwidth to support tv and internet.
 
I'm thinking of dropping them for cable. It would be cheaper,and cable doesn't charge 10 bucks a month for HD service. Also,I could rent a cable card and set up a HTPC for recording shows.
 
atreidesgoldenpath said:
Yes it works both ways since both companies reward new customers over loyal ones.
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Yup, usually you have to not be a customer for 2 years for them to consider you as "new customer" so you could jump from dish to directv to cable, and back again.

Now if I could only do that with internet I would be happy.
 
mullet said:
WHen I had Direct TV I liked it. Now that I have Uverse it made me appreciate DIrect TV much more. Uverse is junk, the equipment is junk, image quality is junk and I just rewired my whole house with quad shielded RG6 with no splitters. My 49.99 antenna gets better image quality hands down!!!
Click to expand...

My 75 year old grandfather got rid of U-Verse because he said it was like watching "puzzles" rather than TV shows :D
 
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